Once Upon a Starry Night
I was browsing twitter and stumbled upon this amazing piece of art by @itami_gomi.
The environment and colors of their work drew me into the scene. I was inspired to design a soundscape of tranquility to match the beauty of the scene, and want to walk you through my approach.
Full Scene in Action
I began with designing the bed for the scene. Logic and Reaper are my primary DAWs, and for this project I began work in Logic. Seamless looping of ambient recordings was achieved through splicing the audio in the center, then dragging the end clip before the original start. This technique results in a seamless transition between start and end of the clips in Wwise, while a simple crossfade at the center glues the rest together.
Logic Session I Used to Record and Edit Sounds
After importing my audio files in Wwise, I organized the various elements into folders. Within the "Animal" grouping were wildlife sounds to add unseen life to the environment. The dog howl, cricket chirp, owl hoot, cicada buzz, and frog croak are spatialized with randomization to add dynamism to the scene.
Animal Spatialization Example
Next, in my first time using blend containers, I created an RTPC “Gravel” to account for terrain diversity, that effects the tire/dirt contact sample and bike chain SFX. With the blend container, I took two ground sources of different intensity and crossfaded in the container.
Gravel Blend Example
The same system is employed for the bike chain/spin. This design allows
ease of sound transition between different tagged terrain types and can expand to include more materials.
Bike Chain Blend Example
Postmortem
Overall, I am happy with how this quick design turned out. If I were to revisit the model or alter existing systems, I'd like to see how I could modify the design to be switch based rather than dependent on RTPC's to instantiate the terrain change. I think switches would be an easier method to call from were I to implement this into a full game. Still, I believe I was successful in capturing the essence of the scene. Shoutout again to @itami_gomi for the incredible work!
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